The beauty and magic of New York City on skates

What is it about skating that captivated so many New York City illustrators and painters during the 19th and early 20th centuries?

[Below, “Skating in Central Park,” 1910]

It could be the challenge of capturing the motions of skating, the gliding or rolling skaters do, kind of an unchoreographed dance even the clumsiest person can master.

Or perhaps in the case of ice skating, artists can’t resist the glorious winter colors that frame New York’s frozen ponds and lakes.

[“Skaters, Central Park,” 1912]

Skating might also have been seen as a little risque. During the Gilded Age, ice skating was one of the few social activities men and women could do together without upsetting the boundaries of the era’s gender-specific spheres.

[“Roller Skating Rink,” 1906]

Ashcan School artist William Glackens painted these three images of New Yorkers on skates. He may have simply enjoyed depicting spirited scenes of day-to-day life in the city where he lived and worked (his studio was on Ninth Street off Fifth Avenue).

The roller skating rink painting, however, stems from an actual trip to a city rink Glackens made with Robert Henri and other Ashcan painters.

“The hilarious evening, in which Glackens was the first to fall, encapsulates the artist’s fascination with the modern city and its popular attractions,” wrote the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has this work in its collection.

Little sledders enjoying Central Park in winter

In his 1905 painting “Central Park, Winter,” Ashcan School artist William Glackens “portrays a group of well-behaved children sledding down a gentle slope in New York’s Central Park under the watchful eyes of adults who dot the perimeter of a snowy knoll,” states the website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“The children are warmly dressed and the adults are fashionably clothed, signaling that this is a story of middle-class recreation.”

“Despite their nominal commitment to telling the unvarnished truth about modern life and urban hardship, Glackens and other Ashcan artists viewed their world through rose-colored glasses, presenting the city euphemistically and, as here, depicting people at leisure in quasi-rural surroundings rather than in their overcrowded home neighborhoods.”

Glackens often painted winter scenes in the city. Here he capture more fashionably dressed women and children on a slushy day in Washington Square Park.